The second Ruckus at the Revival from Opera Revue was subtitled “The Parody Edition” and with the odd exception that’s what it was.;  Music by Mozart, Sullivan, Delibes and more supported witty lyrics about Opera Revue’s perennial bêtes noires.  Doug Ford (and all his little Satanic demons), the TTC, the housing crisis, Toronto drivers and the rest got exactly what they deserved to the audience’s approval and delight.  Most of the words and a good deal of the singing here from Opera Revue stalwarts Danie Friesen and Alex Hajek.

But there was much more.  Greg Finney not only sang two verses of “I’ve got a little list” from The Mikado, savaging AI, but got ChatGPT to create another verse in realtime.  There were other new targets.  A lament on the lifestyle of a modern opera singer sung by Danie to the tune of “Meine Lippen, sie küssen so heiß” and a pandemic duet to a possibly recognisable tune (there is only one instantly recognisable duet in all of opera) by Danie and Alexandra Leblanc.  There was even dance with Alayna Kellett, in tutu and pointe shoes, and covering a lot of ground contributing the Electric Guitar Sugar Plum Fairy accompanied by Michael McKenzie.  Even the ballet isn’t safe from Opera Revue.

At times seriousness threatened to break out with, for example, a rather good version of “Donde lieta”. by Alexa.  But Danie and Alex recycling fake snow over the singer’s head removed any risk of that.  Gene Wu’s excellent singing of “O Vin, dissipe la tristesse” from Thomas’ Hamlet was likewise gently subverted by frequent interruptions from Greg with glass, bottle, corkscrew etc.  And there was more; I’ve got a little list.

The standard of music making was, as usual with Opera Revue, very high.  It would be easy to make the mistake that a not so serious show of this type would be an excuse not to produce top notch singing but all the performers pulled out all the stops in solo and ensemble numbers with excellent support from Claire Harris at the keyboard.

The Revival is a good venue for this kind of show.  There’s a fair amount of table seating and the bar stays open in true Opera Revue style.  The audience was quite loud but much more engaged than at Debauchery at the Dakota earlier in the year.  Encouragingly, to boot, there were a lot of OR first timers, or so a show of hands suggested.  Here’s to the next one.